Jesse Jackson, who says the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. is far from a closed book, is choosing an unusual format for keeping the events of April 4, 1968, before the public: He will write the forward to a new book by James Earl Ray, King`s assassin. ”I do not believe he (Ray) acted alone,” said Jackson, who was nearby when King was gunned down at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. ”The investigations have never gotten to the truth of what happened that day. I have never accepted the `single crazy man` theory.”
Ray`s second book, called ”Who Killed Martin Luther King?: The True Story by the Alleged Assassin,” is scheduled to be published in November by American Press Books. Ray, 63, now serving a 99-year prison term in Tennessee after pleading guilty to King`s slaying, also wants the case reopened.
COMPLETE COMMONWEALTH During her nearly four decades as Britain`s queen, the one member of the Commonwealth that Elizabeth II had never visited was Namibia. That gap was filled Tuesday when Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, were welcomed to the 1-year-old desert nation by singers, traditional dancers and a special honor guard of Namibian soldiers trained by the British since independence. Although Namibia was never a British colony, the traditional requirement for belonging to the 50-nation Commonwealth, it was administered by South Africa when the apartheid state belonged to the Commonwealth.
WILLY BRANDT ILL An ill Willy Brandt has canceled all appointments this week, and the daily newspaper Bild reported that the 77-year-old former West German chancellor may be suffering from thrombosis or blood clotting in his legs. Brandt won the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for his ”Ostpolitik” overtures to Eastern Europe.
NOBEL LOBBYING One would think the Nobel Peace Prize, arguably the world`s most prestigious honor, would be free of glad-handers and pests, but the lobbying that goes on would do the people who work Capitol Hill proud. Backers of one candidate, who didn`t even make the Nobel Institute`s ”short list,” sent 40 boxes stuffed with petitions and words of his great deeds. But the Institute`s Geir Lundestad told Reuters that the ”fair amount of lobbying . . . is almost without exception by what we could call marginal candidates.” The prize will be announced Monday, and prime candidates include Burmese opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyyi, Pope John Paul II, President Bush, Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis and South Africa`s Nelson Mandela.
TWAIN`S SAGE WORDS Long before Congress set up a bank to bounce checks, Mark Twain had the nation`s lawmakers pegged pretty well: ”Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
